So Where Do We Go From Here?

A friend once told me that writing is a skill like any other, you get good and stay good at it by continuing to use it. So here we are with nearly 250 days between now and my last post on this thing. Do we let it die? Do I try to post something every day? Do I change the format and talk about things that others might find interesting?

These are are the questions that anyone, if there is anyone out there reading, would be asking. I know that I have stopped reading blogs of people who post more frequently that I do, but not frequently enough. I have no excuses, I feel no need to make them. Life gets in the way. And then there is the problem of something that you used to love, becomes a chore, another item on a checklist of things to do. I sure as hell didn’t think five years ago that I would think of creative writing as a chore.

Personally, I blame the liberal arts. As a history major at my university, I had a tremendous blast writing about things for classes. At least I did at first. But when you have to write your ninth paper on the economic history of 17th century Russia, you start to lose a taste for it. Stories that I started writing and interesting concepts that I had diagramed out on napkins and notebooks dwindled and shrank. Ideas came less and less frequently. I think two things happened here.

As I matriculated, I read more and more than I ever had at any point previous. Not only did I continue to read fiction and non-fiction for pleasure, but the obscure books and articles that I read for classes and term papers introduced me to new ideas and styles of writing that I had never been exposed to before.

I came to a few revelations about my work and leared a few things:

1. My writing was good for what it was, but there was so much that could be done with the style, the grammar, the motivation of characters, etc.
2. I never quite felt like my work was ever going to be good enough.
3. I finally embraced the drafting system of writing, not formally but enough to re-read work and to edit it.

Then college ended. I graduated, got a comfy civil service job, and have been there ever since. I wouldn’t call my position mentally or intellectually challenging, but I have forced myself to use my writing skills and my brain more that I thought necessary for that type of position. I pushed my superiors to challenge me and they tried. However, with that responsibility came more paperwork, more emails to send, more forms to fill out, more procedures to document. I seem to have discovered that I have a limit to the amount of characters that I will type on a computer screen in any given day. If I have to deal with this number or push myself, I feel exhausted mentally. In short I had become complacent. I went from using one excuse, “I can’t write on my blog/novel/short story/TV idea because I’m working on this American History paper” to “I just wrote a 12 page critique of a idiotic idea that someone at work wants to do and I’m too fucking tired.”

In fact the phrase “I’m too fucking tired” became common place around my house post-graduation. First it was just me decompressing from a stressful stay at university. Enjoying the fact that I no longer needed to stay up late writing term papers or feel guilty about not reading the 100 pages about women in the 1920’s that was due to be discussed at length in the next small section. Then it was because I was being to Epicurian; places to go, things to do. And finally it became a habit.

Not that I haven’t tried to break this habit. Starting this blog was one idea, writing a book was another. I tried my hat at National Novel Writing Month. Didn’t take. I hadn’t spent enough time, nor enough effort in developing characters. Sometimes I would stare for hours at a piece of paper and not write a thing down. This is something that I desperately wanted to try, but I couldn’t get it going.

Recently, I have lamented the fact that used to love to write to my fiancé. I bemoaned how I don’t have the patience any more for it. It’s a shame too, because my writing was one of the things that she was attracted to when we were going out. I have been thinking about this for a while and I finally realized that this was the place to get back in the saddle. I tried the Doctor Who reviews and I may get back to that at some point, but I felt I was restricting myself too much about what I put up here.

That stops now. From now on I will be less stringent about my standards, not that they were that high to begin with. Content is king. Sometimes it will be little bits about my day, sometimes about how awesome a hockey game was, how much certain aspects of life irritate me, or tidbits of my day. It could be an article about Apple or Macintosh, or one about how much snow is on the ground. Just be prolific is the new motto. We’ll see how it goes from there. It won’t always be great, but at least it will be.

To those of you still out there, I’ll try to be more regular, but I need some more mental fiber before that happens.

Sage Advice Merlin.

Internet Jackass Day

I started this post about a year ago today and set it aside when I thought perhaps that I was being a bit harsh on the pranks people pull on website readers during the wonderful time that was April Fool’s Day. Used to be many, many years ago (or so the great and powerful sages in the Wikipedia tell me) April Fool’s was for young whippersnappers to play pranks on their neighbors and their elders to their heart’s delight. The key, though, was fact that these were practical jokes. Practical as in meaning that they were actual pranks and jokes played by using the surroundings and actual means to conduct these shenanigans.
Perhaps it’s my inner curmudgeon speaking, but you really cannot call the latest incarnation of early spring malfeasance “practical joking”. Most of it comes on the internet, through legitimate internet sites devoted to news and updates of a particular subject (news, sports, game updates etc. etc.) running a false story that is just convincing enough to be real to the eyes of the unwary. Now, some folks do this convincingly enough or are clever enough for these infractions to be overlooked. Blizzard Entertainment, for example, has a long history of posting April Fool’s day shenanigans that is both fun and clever. This time around, at least on the Starcraft II front, it was a base that transforms into an ultimate unit laden with Transformers references. All in good fun right? I would tend to agree. Along the same vein but take a look at Starcraft Legacy. Clearly you can get the sense that I am jonesing for some information about Blizzards upcoming Starcraft II, which is fine, I have no shame in admitting that I am a gamer-nerd. For the last two weeks SCL has been running a pair of countdown timers set about a week apart. The first expired at the end of last week and revealed a rather disappointing thing. The Legacy was apparently gearing up for a large update of their website format. Fine. Countdown timer seems a little overboard, but whatever. Then we (those people that read this site) find out that the folks at SCL can’t actually deliver on their promise to have the next version of their website up and running after they have built up a certain sense of anticipation amongst their viewers. Lame.
Then we have the second timer which the community surrounding Starcraft Legacy was a bit more excited about as they had figured out what the first timer was in relation to. Buzz abounded. Was it an announcement of the long awaited Starcraft II beta? An in depth look at the campaign? Then Wednesday came and went. The announcement? A contest to possibly get a SC2 beta key. Sure it wasn’t as exciting as an announcement of a beta starting or anything quite that sexy, but it was Starcraft II news surely. Then the bombshell. It was all an elaborate, and might I add rather lame, April Fool’s prank. Not only was there no beta, but the lame contest that they dreamt up was also a misdirect. Perhaps the website administration felt they were being clever and subtle, aping the way that Blizzard typically does big game announcements with rotating title screens and countdown timers, but every once and a great while the boys at Blue actually have something to show for their cocktease.
April Fool’s Day in a relatively minor segment of even the gamer internet not good enough for you? Fine how about a “reputable” print media source? Take this article which originally ran in the online edition of the Wisconsin State Journal: Wisconsin to Forfeit Victory against Cal-Poly for Illegal Goalposts. Given the misadventures of Wisconsin football in the last decade, one can be forgiven for taking the sports section of a major local newspaper at their word. My mistake. Reading it for a second time, I can see where it turns from a logical story of a sports team gone wrong into a comedy of errors that anyone with half of a brain should be able to spot from miles away, but the major problem with that was; this is a newspaper. I want to get the news from this item, nothing more nothing less. I still am mostly against the idea of having opinion columns in papers; just the facts ma’am.
So we climb the internet tree from the gamer-nerd to the sports-nerd, to the guy who just wants to know what is going on in his neighborhood. It is a shame that one cannot trust the output of many fine sites during the early part of April, because it just puts another nail in the coffin of getting serious information from these people. Even if the topic is genial, like a video game, the information should be as accurate as possible. There are enough hysterias in the would wrongly created by misinformation, why help.

So please join with me next year and avoid publishing or distributing lame rumors about games, sports, public figures, etc. unless that is your business plan. Let’s put an end to Internet Jackass Day once and for all.

I Had a Little Drobo, I Made Him Out of Hard Drives

As we may all remember, I had a serious drive crash a few weeks ago. It obliterated my iTunes library in the process, including the many many hours of both old and new Doctor Who which had formed the basis of the reviews I had been writing for several weeks. While I still have notes on one, I have decided to postpone the entire event until I get back up and running, which will probably be a few months yet.

In the meantime, as anyone who has been bitten by data loss will tell you, I decided to make sure something like this would never happen again. I had heard about this product called Drobo for several months prior to the fatal crash, and was intruiged by the innate coolness if being able to hot plug the device and exchange the drives on the fly. The other cool thing that Drobo did was create a uniform pool of storage that could be accessed and used as a primary data pool. Very neat.

There were two problems with the original Drobo. One, the interface was only USB which posed a problem for the seemless transfer and playback of video files which was to be the main point of existance. Secondly, the price of entry was rather steep. At $500 I could use the setup I already had And still have some money left over. Five hundred is just the price of the exterior case, no drives included. I was still interested, but having a solution that already worked and that I had recently purchased I was reluctant to replace it. Then two things happened. The second generation Drobo appeared replete with FireWire 800 (which is absolutley essential for streaming video) and my drive setup crashed, hard.

Even though the setup cost was substantial, I have to say, after using it for several months now, Drobo is with every freakin’ penny. Redundancy, expandibilty, and ease of use trump any other storeage system out there. The abilty to just pop out a drive and replace it when it’s full or damaged means that you can buy for your storage needs now and upgrade when you have the need to without damaging any of the data or even interupting active transfers. It’s quiet, mostly unobtrusive, and above all fast and reliable enough to be used as a primary storage solution. I have enough video sitting on my Drobo to watch continuously for nearly a month. My daily backups also sit safely and redundantly on my Drobo. This is quite possibly the most important purchase that I have ever made for enhancing my digital life style and I couldn’t be happier with it. As the fellas on MacBreak Weekly say, I’m feelin’ Droovy.

The Edge of Destruction

I never used to like The Edge of Destruction. It was sandwiched between two old favorites, The Daleks and The Keys of Marinus. There weren’t any fantastic enemies, neat sets, or seemingly any plot. Needless to say I have taken a renewed stance on The Edge of Destruction (and The Keys of Marinus for that matter), and find it to be quite insightful into the minds of the main characters’ motivations and the insecurities that they still feel after being abducted by the Doctor in An Unearthly Child. I will have to say that being a fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, I confess to thinking that character arcs are something that is relatively new in execution, as well as feeling that the story arcs are also something new to the state of television. Thus it was refreshing to notice the exposition of both character arcs and story arcs in something as old as the first season of Doctor Who.

The Edge of Destruction is Doctor Who’s first bottle show and perhaps the first bottle show in the history of television (it certainly is the earliest instance that I could find with just a little bit of research). The setting is in the TARDIS, with a grand total of two different sets, the console room and one of the passenger dorms. And it gives us an opportunity to see the rest of the ship. It looks pretty good, but I still hate the food machine. It pulls one out of the story and makes the show feel dated, but other than that there is a lot to like in the early set design.

As far as stories go this one is pretty thin: The Doctor and his new companions are trapped in some kind of cosmic limbo as the TARDIS hurtles toward annihilation with all of its crew-members. That’s it. Now being a fan of Star Trek, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that The Ticking Clock™ doesn’t hold the same appeal that it once might have. However in this portrayal there is a twist, the Doctor, that lovable curmudgeon that he is, suspects his passengers, namely Ms. Wright and Mr. Chesterton, to be the cause of the malfunction that will send them all to their doom. It all makes for a wonderful study in paranoia and suspicion that ends up turning all of the main characters against each other. Coping with difficult and incomprehensible situations leads to some kind of mistrust in the others around you and this is brilliantly illustrated through the straightforward and reliable plot. Sure, there are no bells and whistles, but there are wonderful character moments for nearly all of them.

The Doctor starts off by blaming Ian and Barbara for the damage as well as going so far as to suggest sabotage. When Ian logically retorts that he doesn’t know enough to cause that kind of damage the Doctor dismisses him wholeheartedly. Hartnell plays the suspicious and capricous Doctor to the T and points the fingers at his companions, whom he still views as stowaways. Barbara’s retort is just wonderful. She points out that there is no way of knowing that the Doctor might be the one who sabotaged the ship, as he had done for his own ends twice before in An Unearthly Child and The Daleks. She goes on to make the point that this paranoia serves no purpose and that they are stuck together and should be considering not tearing into each other like this on The Edge of Destruction. The most interesting part is what follows. The Doctor’s mood changes as if he has just been tranquilized. He seems defeated by her logic and withdraws, but the glint in his eye does not spell good things for the crew as he is clearly hatching a plan. Realizing that Barbara is a threat he drugs her and Ian. I’ll repeat that. He drugs them. This is huge. Only Ian is understandably furious at the Doctor and the tension reaches a fever-pitch. Then the Doctor actually threatens to kill them. Only a combination of Barbara arguing with him and Susan pleading with him is enough to pull him back from the brink.

Speaking of Susan, aside from a few nice moments, such as when she attacks Barbara with the scissors, Susan is more and more of an annoyance. The screeching, moaning, and sobbing grates to such an extent that I found it difficult to physically make it through those scenes. From day one Carole Ann Ford’s portrayal of Susan has been over-the-top and annoying. She reacts as an excitable child, more so than what seems necessary to act as a 15 year old. Her mysterious communications with the ship and with, apparently, time itself are weak and preposterous. Well more preposterous than a time traveling phone box piloted by an immortal. If Susan doesn’t get any better, I may have to write off her character, which is unfortunate because there is a lot there that would make splendid material.

Ian is a predictable as ever; trying to work with the Doctor and trying ever so hard to hide is growing frustrations with this man. Russell performs adequately, but there is nothing that shines so much so as to over shadow the true star of Destruction, Jacqueline Hill as Barbara. She is wonderful in every scene that she has, from grappling with an increasingly crazy and vindictive Doctor to dealing with Susan and her issues. Barbara is smartly written and superbly acted throughout the entirety of the serial. She is the first to figure out, both what the deranged Doctor is about to do, and exactly what the actual situation is. She is constantly portrayed as informing the other characters about the circumstance; fitting perfectly as the teacher that she has been written as. The best part is that it doesn’t feel like it was written for her, it feels as if Barbara Wright is an actual person who is reacting to this situation in a real way. Kudos to the entire team this time around. The finest moment comes when the Doctor realizes that he has erred and goes to apologize to the crew. Ian takes his apology in an “all in good fun” manner, but Barbara is much less forgiving of the situation. She realizes what might have transpired and it might be some time before the fledging trust that she had established with the Doctor can be restored. Hill does a wonderful job of playing that vulnerable state that someone is in after a large trauma and she seems just as disconnected as one would be in this situation. The Doctor for his part acts appropriately ashamed and there seems to be room for reconciliation, but the fact that it won’t happen immediately is great and entertaining.

All in all Edge of Destruction is a fine close to the opening character and plot arcs of the series. It closes off the worst of the stubbornness of the First Doctor and the distrust that he feels towards his companions and he grows into the Doctor that we know and love. While misanthropic nature is interesting, it could easily grow tiring and worn if the Doctor continued to second-guess and scheme against his companions for the entirety of Hartnell’s tenure as the Doctor. Furthermore it would have shown a lack of dynamism for such an interesting character, and the very fact that other characters have such an impact on him is refreshing and shows that there is room for grown. Also ends the era of uninterrupted Doctor Who; the next story Marco Polo is the first of the historicals as well first story to be completely lost to history. There are various reconstructions available and this is how I will be reviewing it as well as experiencing it for the first time. I look forward to it immensely and hope to bring you, Gentle Reader, my thoughts on it in the near future.

Forthcoming

So I think I may have finally gotten my act back together…
Reconstruction of the Doctor Who series has commenced with some gusto.

Expect to see a review for the Edge of Destruction in the next few days.

Paraphrasing a great man “Rumors of my disconnection have been greatly exaggerated.”

I shall return.

On the Mobile WordPress

As I had mentioned in a previous post, I recently installed the iPhone 2.0 software on my iPod touch. For the most part the process has been pretty memorable. For example, I’m writing this post on my iPod so that should give you an idea of just how massively cool this transformation of something that was just a really wicked media player in September of 2007 to what is now a pocket sized computer. The transformation was stark. When I first got the touch, I played around with all of the features. This pretty much decided which types of applications I was going to use on a day-to-day basis. iPod was a clear winner, video was also a function that seemed to pull me back again and again. I bought an album and a few songs here and there with the mobile iTunes store, but beyond that there wasn’t really much utility. YouTube was interesting, but I never was one to waste a lot of time browsing the latest video phenomenon.

So I basicially used it as an iPod that I woud ocasionally use for some of it’s rich media functions. Welcome to January 2008. I pay the $20 for the upgrade. It kind of feels like a gyp but I go for it anyway. Mobile mail wins hands down as the most useful app of the bunch. I have heard a bunch of complaints about how this mail app doesn’t do this and it doesn’t do that, but it works for me with just one IMAP account snyced to it. Many of the people who complained the loudest were those who had more than one email account. Now, like everyone in the Web 2.0 world, I have got several email accounts; four to be precise. One for business, one personal, one for signing up for junk, and one for fun. I made the decision a long time ago that since about 70% of my email comes through one account then that was the one that I was going to be using on my iPod touch.
For me $20 dollars was worth it just to use the mobile email app that just seemed so ridiculosly cool on the iPhone. As it is I’m pretty much an enormous email junkie and instead of using the web client of my email, I get to use the interface that was one of the cornerstones of the original iPhone. If I decided that I wanted to take more email around with me then at the very least a unified inbox would be necessary. All in all it was worth it for me.

Move to now and I’m just blown away with what can be done on a pocket sized device. Incredible. The very fact that I’m composing with an iterface that can change at a whim to suit the predillections of the designer, also boggles my mind. The WordPress mobile app is pretty good. Like I’m sure that I have said before, I’m a writer not a web designer, so first impressions are about how I can feed info into the device and if this rather lengthy post illustrates it’s pretty damned easy. The interface is clean, simple and easy to use. I’m guessing the programmers weren’t anticipating people like me typing my thumbs off and yearning for paragraphing and ofthe typographical features, because for composing anything longer than a few sentences can be trying unless you’re really invested in the process. Clearly a win for the WordPress team and I’ll be using it until MarsEdit mobile rolls out.

Crashiness

So I had a bit of an adventure last Sunday. I lost the drive that contains most of my media, which includes all of the Doctor Who that would have constituted the reviews that I was writing.

Until that’s rectified I’ll be postponing the Doctor Who reviews until such a time that I have reconstituted my collection. I have most of the old stuff, but the way that I converted the stuff eliminates the possibility of a straight restore from the backup.

While I wait I will just enjoy the iPhone 2.0 that is available for the iPod touch and say that Remote is possibly the most useful piece of software that I have ever used. Being a media junkie that I am, Remote allows me to control Apple TV and remote iTunes speakers from my iPod. Wicked fucking cool.

Be back soon…

The Daleks

This story, first broadcast in late 1963, is perhaps the most famous of all of the Doctor Who extant from the black and white era. It introduces the Doctor’s most famous enemy and begins itself a legacy that will last all ten incarnations of the Doctor with the usual ups and downs. While An Unearthly Child was a solid start to the Doctor Who franchise, then The Daleks is what cemented it’s name in the minds of the television viewing public. It features all of the good aspects of early Doctor Who, the first Doctor’s capriciousness and arrogance, strong work from all of the companions, and a compelling story held tightly together with excellent characterization.

As the story begins, we find the TARDIS has crash landed on a mysterious planet in the middle of an even more mysterious jungle. True to form for early Hartnell era Who, the Doctor has no idea where the group has landed and is insatiably curious to find out more. Ian and Barbara are also curious about the nature of this forest, which in a curious and alien twist turns out to be petrified and contain an animal that was at one point held together by strong magnetic fields, but as a particularly good exchange between the two characters points out; they just want to go home. If the Doctor is insatiably curious about the petrified jungle, then he is positively obsessed about the magnificent city that he sees in the distance and the Doctor and Ian nearly come to blows over vacating the cliff. There is the expected battling over who is in charge, and I like it that Barbara doesn’t just let the men decide who should be making all of the decisions and not only does she have to remind the Doctor of it, but also the increasingly paternalistic Ian. She wants her voice heard and props to Terry Nation for not forgetting the strong female character that they established in Child.

I should take a moment to mention the sets in use during The Daleks. Even the fact that all of this was clearly filmed on a soundstage doesn’t detract from the usage of excellent properties work and inspired set design. Partially due to the convincing way that the props and sets are used by the actors to convince us of the reality of the sets and partially due to the excellent design work, the sets in The Daleks work extremely well. The jungle feels forested, yet stone; clearly evidenced when Susan collects a flower (which Ian then carelessly destroys). The Lake of Mutations is convincing enough, though it is the first time that we hear the various stock sounds that will be used in every forest from here until the end of the classic series, but the sound mix works when taken in context of the first time it was heard. The cave sets are convincing as well, and are blessedly mostly devoid of stage lighting. The Dalek city is particularly impressive, barring a few minor discrepancies like convenient boulders and open elevator shafts. It clearly feels distinctly alien as the corridors are designed for the shorter stature Daleks. Add to this the towering spires, well realized in the model work, the eerie whistling noise in the city and the distinctive throbbing in the Dalek command center, and the design of the story is well played out.

As a race the Thals are pretty much typecast, or so it would seem, from the outset, by Nation’s willingness to use them as an allegory for the pitfalls of pacifism. Despite this ardent non-agression the individualism of the Thal tribe shines through solid acting. Temmosus is well realized as a leader who had the stories of Dalek aggression and the horrors of war passed down through the generations; he realizes what is happening and even the very lands of his home stand as a testament to the evils of violence and warfare. He is noble and tragic all at the same time. When the Thals find the Daleks uncooperative and threatening, it seems that Alydon understands what needs to be done, but it still takes some convincing. Even characters which by all rights should have been written off still have their moments, whether it’s Ganatus’ impetuous flirting with Barbara or Antodus’ nervousness and then self-sacrifice makes the Thals seem human and relatable.

On the counterpoint are the episodes eponymous Daleks themselves. They are mysterious, alien, calculating, and vicious. The design of the Dalek is unique and startling and along with the grating voices used by the sound workshop are satisfyingly used to create something totally alien. I have in my notebook the word “callous” written down about four times in the margin in regards to the Daleks’ actions. I don’t think there is a better word for the Daleks in this story. They are cold, manipulative, ordered, and above all callous with their actions. Using Susan to lure the Thals to the city and then brutally murdering several of them under the offer of truce, testing the anti-radiation drugs on several Dalek work groups and then finding it to be defective and then not worrying one lick about the fate of those afflicted, and finally willing to damage Skaro even more to ensure their survival; the Daleks are callous to the extreme in this story.

While the Daleks are intelligent and devious, it is nice to see the Doctor and his companions all formulating sensible and straightforward plans to escape from their imprisonment. It works nicely with the plot itself and allows the viewer to follow along easily. The first escape from the Dalek cell proves to be well thought out and very simple. The Thal plan to attack the city and the Doctor’s plans to confuse the Dalek sensors are all simple and very believable. Best of all they are explained to the audience in such a way that we are not taken as sods watching and are expected to fill in where there are constraints and it works.

Barbara stands out as not being in the shadows and while she is relegated to the many woman’s tasks in this story, she has important say to the success of the mission. Her relationship with Ian begins to grow and bear fruit They both begin to act as confidants to each other; each a touchstone to the twentieth century that they both can relate to. Jacqueline Hill’s characterization and acting with Philip Bond’s seemingly minor, yet tremendously important Ganatus is just superb. Clearly these two are reacting to the situation by moving closer to each other and the attraction there is undeniable between the two. The underlying subtleness of the acting makes it extraordinarily believable that Barbara is hesitant to leave Ganatus at the end of the story, but she knows that she must. Brilliantly acted and played.

More pedestrian, but serviceable still is William Russell as Ian Chesterton. He gets his chance to go head to head with the Doctor and becomes the voice of reason to the Doctor’s mischief. Clearly there is some dick measuring going on as Ian and the Doctor fight for control of the group, but most of Russell’s sequences involve Ian explaining to someone (Barbara, Susan, the Doctor, any number of Thals) about the error of their ways. I understand that the fight in the Thal camp was meant to be provoked, but it couldn’t have looked any more scripted if Nation and the actors had tried. Despite being handed such schlock, Russell does well. And by schlock I mean what is one of the few dark spots in an otherwise stellar serial.

Susan continues her descent into annoyance. I can’t tell if it’s a good idea to get this infuriated with a character this early in the shows’ run, but I know that I am. Thankfully the hysteria, which one can only through the story attribute to the condition of the female sex, is a a minimum during most of this story, but there are a few moments where Susan’s presence is felt in the exactly the wrong way. Two that stand out are the run through the jungle and the very strange laugh outburst as she writes the letter to the Thals. The constant shrieking couldn’t have done much for the burgeoning women’s rights movement in England at the time. Unfortunately there is very little to counterbalance these episodes, with the exception of a nice moment of Susan and the Doctor just being grandfather and grandchild as they sabotage the Dalek equipment. The two of them work out a clever way to harm the Daleks and seem to bond a bit on screen. Of course when the Daleks inevitably show up she screams her freaking lungs out. I have heard it told that one of the unoffical pre-requisites for being a companion on Doctor Who is to have good screaming voice, well therein is Carol Anne Ford.

Finally we come to the Doctor. Still reeling from having two strangers in his spaceship, he is still at odds with at least Ian. Ian shows no regard for the Doctor’s fancies and the Doctor will not forgive him for it. Hartnell plays the Doctor as a misanthrope and a curmudgeon eager to leave the world and its’ inhabitants to their own business so that he can get one with his. The sabotage of the TARDIS just to sneak a peak at the alien city ranks up there as one of the most iconic sequences in all of Who. The Doctor creates the situation and when he feels he has rectified it some, is perfectly content to abandon the Thals to their plight with the Daleks. Clearly he does not know his enemies because he attempts to reason with them. Out of context that seems ridiculous, but when viewed within the context of the Doctor having just met them, it works.

One of the more shocking revelations is the Doctor’s offer to construct a TARDIS for the Daleks if they would let him go. Only then does the Doctor realize that there is no reasoning with them and he resolves to escape. Hartnell plays the Doctor tight, close to the vest in such a way not to reveal the cards that he wants to play. The Doctor still doesn’t trust his hitchhiking companions and it feels like an almost real situation in the way that the Doctor is suspicious of Barbara and Ian. Shocking to Doctor Who fans now perhaps, but totally real and believable.This also allows the Doctor room for growth along a character arc. Clearly he doesn’t fully trust his companions yet, but there is definitely improvement in that respect.

All in all The Daleks is a wonderful addition to the mythology of Doctor Who and it sets the stage for some of the most imaginative and excellent storytelling on this show as a showpiece for the Daleks who will become the supreme enemy of the Doctor. Taken by itself there are few flaws in an excellently acted, written, and directed story about the dangers of extreme pacifism.

An Unearthly Child

November 23, 1963. It was a dark and stormy night… Wait, that’s not quite right. It was many, many years ago and the only storm brewing was one in America about the assassination of President Kennedy. But it was on this night that Britons got their first glimpse of a science-fiction phenomenon that would encompass nearly four decades and scare the bejesus out of millions of children in the British Isles and later in America.

An Unearthly Child has the distinct disadvantage of being overshadowed by its immediate successor, The Daleks, which is a shame because Child is quite good and serves as a stellar introduction in to the Doctor Who mthyos. It has excellent first turns around the wheel for what would be the principle cast members, serviceable and believable acting from the guests, mostly convincing sets, determined pacing, and simple but powerful and entertaining storytelling. One thing that doesn’t get too much attention today is how committed Doctor Who was to sticking to its premise and not being overly consumed with the other science fiction fads that would come along during its distinguished career.

Of course everything starts with the beginning and Doctor Who’s beginning was phenomenal. The theme combined with what is a very stunning visual that some how seems to convey the sense of time travel that some of the other “tunnel-less” versions. Even though this isn’t the first mix that I was introduced to, I find that I much prefer this version. It seems less produced, though clearly any research to that matter shows that Delia Derbyshire’s original mix was run through the ringer just as much as the others would be. Other than that the opening few seconds set the scene quite well in the 1960’s London. The mists rolling through the city and the policeman gazing through the junkyard isn’t quite eerie, but is definitely unsettling in some unspecified manner. It works great as a hook into the setting. If there is one thing to be said about Child, it is that it works great with establishing atmosphere.

Aside from the fact that Totter’s Lane looks like a junkyard for a movie set and the fact that the exterior sets that establish location in the first few moments when the Doctor and his companions travel back in time are utter rubbish, the sets in this story work incredibly well. The Cave of Skulls, the interior of the TARDIS, the Coal Hill School, and even the forest work superbly. The skeletons scattered about the cave set are convincing when they need to be. The first glimpse at the interior of the TARDIS is startling and stands in stark contrast to the grungy exterior of the junkyard and even surprises though I have seen that particular set or variations on it hundreds of times. Placing yourself in the shoes of Barbara and Ian in that situation yields a better appreciation for the set design in a show that was oft maligned for exactly such things.

All the better with the atmosphere set and the tone established from shot one, is the presence of some truly adroit actors who are supported by a script that fluctuates slightly in quality, but is ultimately focused on advancing a simple yet engrossing plot. Because this is the first time that we meet both Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton, I want to talk a bit about the first impressions that I garnered from their initial appearances and subsequent interactions with each other. Clearly these are both bright people who are intrigued by the problem of Susan Foreman. It is a credit to the acting of both William Russell and Jacqueline Hill that Ian and Barbara feel like colleagues who have known each other long enough to be comfortable discussing such a problem with one another. In Ian’s interaction with Susan, he is self-depricating and charming enough to try to lure Susan out of her shell by mentioning the name of the band that Susan is listening to on her portable radio. Barbara is clearly intelligent and forceful enough that Ian gives way to her opinion and listens carefully to her. A scene which hints at the depth of their relationship happens when the two of them express doubts about what they are doing and they both feel like real conversations that would be happening at this point. For a story that is so heavy in plot and action, it is nice to see some characterization in two people whose inclusion and character will become highlights of many following Doctor Who serials. Aside from the annoying and awkward flashbacks the car sequence works extremely well.

Then there is Susan. While Carol Ann Ford plays Susan as she is written and there seems to be little that she does that isn’t in the script, I have always had trouble with Susan. Her little smart-ass asides and quips are extremely annoying, but the character does shine through in the early part of An Unearthly Child in that she is bright and inquisitive, but that doesn’t really outstrip the more grating aspects of her personality. The most trying aspect of Susan in this story is the state of near panic when she finds that the Doctor had gone missing. Instead of just assuming that he had walked away from his notebook, she assumes that something has happened to him. And then noisily panics in a scene that is both grating and awkward. Despite the fact that she’s right about him, it feels like weak writing. It’s not really the most evident in this installment, but I certainly will have more to say about Susan as the series winds on.

Finally of course there is the impeccable William Hartnell as the First Doctor. Coming from later incarnations of this touchstone time traveler can be quite a shock when viewing An Unearthly Child for the first time. The Doctor is mysterious, evasive, stubborn, combative, and downright hostile when Ian begins to press him on Susan’s whereabouts. He exercises his reason to determine that Ian and Barbara have essentially trapped themselves in that situation at the junkyard. It takes an act of physical force to make the Doctor let them into the TARDIS and once there he essentially kidnaps them to prove his point. Susan is appalled at his actions and if you’re a Doctor Who fan you might appreciate how jarring this really is; to have the Doctor almost be the bad guy in the story. He warns Ian about the live lead on the console, but laughs capriciously when he electrocutes himself. Clearly this Doctor is not about to be judged by what he views as lower level intellects and flings himself and his companions a hundred thousand years into the past mostly just to prove a point.

Once the TARDIS lands in 100,000 B.C. the story moves to a straight forward plot based adventure, though good bits of characterization slip through in the process. Za is the son of the firemaker and has been charged with the task of making fire, which within the tribe of Gum appears to be of supreme political importance. The political power of something as simple as fire seems ridiculous, but then imagine a world without such a necessity and then imagine someone who has the power to make it at will and then feel all of the influence that he would yield. It is to the credit of Anthony Coburn, the writer, that such a simple concept can be taken to such an extreme, but arrive there logically. The needs and motivations of the cavemen are not complex, but they do flow right from events in the story and thus feel very logical and organic to both the characters and the viewers. However there gets a point where the constant campaigning for leadership and the constant jockeying for power seems a bit excessive. I can’t say whether or not this behavior was typical of early man, but it does feel like padding and gets excessive at points. On the other hand, if it is padding it’s decent padding and reasonably entertaining. Za’s ultimate goal is to gain complete control of the tribe by any means necessary and that includes a rather brutal and realistic fight near the end of the story.

Barbara and Ian really shine in this story. Barbara shows glimpses of her character and looks into the future when she shows compassion to the injured Za and both of them show their teachers’ tendencies when they try to instruct the cavemen on how to make a new society. Of course it all it fails, but it is entertaining to watch it do so. The power struggle between the Doctor and Ian show two different points of view; the Doctor clearly alien and pragmatic only concerned with the welfare of his crew and Ian who still views Za a human being despite their past adversity. At the end both Barbara and Ian realize their mistake of trying to place their views and perspectives on the way the world should work and realize that this was a very different time with a very different reality. As for the ending, two words: Flaming. Skulls. Quite a dramatic ending and a good one.

All in all An Unearthly Child is fundamentally sound with few weak spots. All of the regulars are immediately engaging or at the very least intriguing, the sets are convincing, and the writing just shines. The main structural weakness of being two stories in one is glossed over and by not spending any time on the jump makes it all the less jarring. A strong opening for Doctor Who and certainly one that made me want to see what would happen in the next installment. Of course we all know that The Daleks would turn what could have been an interesting aside in the annals of science fiction into a four decade long behemoth.

Back from the Dead

The most amazing thing happened a few weeks ago. I was hosting a party for a few friends of mine and we had gotten to the end of the evening. Drinks had been consumed and the hour was late. I mentioned something about a television show that I had been watching and for the first time in the long time that I have been a fan, the name “Doctor Who” didn’t draw a bunch of blank stares and require a long lengthy explanation. Most of the people in the room knew to what I as referring to and some had even seen episodes of the newly revived series, though no-one but me had seen the old stuff. We talked about the plot points and the characterization and the generally good work that the new producers had done with the show and I was amazed.

For years it had been impossible to get friends and acquaintances of mine interested in a British science-fiction show that had started years before most of them were born and ended when they were still in diapers. Those that did stick around for the opening volley had to suffer through trite acting, shoddy and implausible scripts, and sets and visual effects that were clearly a product of the time at which they were made. While all of these were true of Dr. Who at it’s worst, Doctor Who at it’s best had wonderful scripts (courtesy of some people you may know the most famous of which being Douglas Adams), very underrated actors, and a singular charm that partly came from its creation during the waning of the British Empire and the attitudes of the BBC at the time.

The premise is one as simple as it is complex; an issue that we have all wanted to deal with since childhood: time travel. The main character is mysterious, misanthropic, jovial, bombastic, clever, trite, and silly all rolled into one. A man and some companions travel through time and space seeking adventure and excitement. Almost reads like a craigslist ad doesn’t it? The Doctor, the main character, is a nearly immortal alien from a distant planet in the future who can travel through space and time. The largest hook is that he can change his appearance whenever he is seriously injured or dying. This is probably the single best reason that this show is still on the air forty-five years after it first premiered. Ten different actors have played the doctor over the course of four and a half decades. While it might seem a bit daunting to jump into the middle of such a mythos, one must remember is that Doctor Who is about the travels of a man and his friends and the adventures that they have. The Doctor is a consummate do-gooder, but is not without his nuance and his dark side. He protects humanity and the greater whole of the galaxy from threats and alien invasions and yearns to teach us about the rights and wrongs of the actions that we take. Plus there’s robots.

Why, might you ask, would I digress from what I normally write about in this forum to write about a TV show? Firstly, it’s no less trivial or geekish as the tripe that normally graces this screen. Secondly, and more importantly, I started writing Hitlerade (it had a different name then, but let’s forget that) to keep my writing skills sharp. Now you can debate whether or not they are any good, but this exercise is really for my benefit. Again what does this have to do with anything? Well considering this is the first post I have made since the end of April, I needed to do some regular writing. Someone suggested that I start reviewing Doctor Who and I latched on to it. I have recently procured a copy of the entire series, from Doctor One all the way to Doctor Ten. I’ll start at the beginning and work my way down the line, watching each serial and writing up a review for it. It combines two of my hobbies, writing and watching TV, plus with the added bonus of hoping that someone cares at some point.

I’ll start with An Unearthly Child and try to keep somewhat of schedule about how I do this hopefully to gain some regular readers and mostly to just keep writing. For those of you who haven’t watched any Doctor Who, Sci-Fi carries it every Friday at eight. And for those who don’t know who William Hartnell, Colin Baker, and Peter Davison are might I suggest the miracle of YouTube?